Howdy all and welcome to another exciting PortableApps.com Update. I must apologize for not keeping on the ball with an update last week, so there's extra punch and pie in the back for anyone who wants some. Now lets get down to business.

Updating Current Portable Apps (In Progress)

Since the last update, FileZilla, WinMerge, VirtualDub and GIMP were updated to the current releases. Staying current on FileZilla was a little extra effort as they made 3 releases in two weeks. And the GIMP update took a lot longer than expected due to some changes within GIMP and the finalization of the extra features.

A new version of Toucan was posted as well as updates for Firefox to 2.0.0.12 and the beta to Beta 3. An update was posted for the XAMPP launcher in conjunction with the XAMPP 1.6.6 release. In addition, AbiWord was updated with a shiny new PortableApps.com Installer, to the latest format and some features were added (making it a worthwhile update for all).

The final updates to Notepad++, Pidgin and Miranda will be posted this weekend. Pidgin may need a brief pre-release. The updates to the other apps to the current PAF will be posted as well.

Development Test Releases (In Progress)

I didn't get to the current dev tests, though Ryan is setting up pages within the app directory for the first releases. Patrick's Assault Cube is coming up first as a pre-release to ease the load on his server. For those who missed them, here are the guidelines again for those interested:

Follow the current PortableApps.com Format spec 0.9.8 (as used in the current KompoZer Portable). This includes the AppInfo directory and the required files within there. Having an appicon.ico with 256 color and XP alpha in 16px, 32px and 48px sizes. And the other details of the PortableApps.com Format (see below)

Use the current PortableApps.com installer with the PortableApps.com branded bannder 0.9.9.0 as used in the latest KompoZer Portable (the Mozilla apps are different) being sure to only alter code within the ";=== BEGIN: PRE-INSTALL CODE" style comments

Doing a new release titled "Development Test 1" or appropriate number. The installer should follow the standard naming convention of App_Portable_1.2_Development_Test_1_en-us.paf.exe

PortableApps.com Format

The draft of the PortableApps.com Format went through one more revision before public posting and will be up by Monday.

Additional Platform Developers

The additional developers interested in working on the main PortableApps.com Platform (Menu, Backup, Installer) have all been invited to join now. We'll be doing a joint copyright assignment along the lines of what Sun does with OpenOffice.org. This will ensure that we can continue to release under the GPL (our preferred license) as well as work with flash drive manufacturers who have advanced features like fingerprint readers, encryption chips, etc. but are either unwilling or unable (due to licensing) to open up their drivers and APIs.

Website CMS/Forum Upgrade Coming

Since the last update, I've updated our Drupal install to the current 5.x release and updated all modules. As some folks may know, Drupal 6.0 was recently released with some features that will be VERY handy for us. The biggest news is that we'll be able to have true forum mods with the ability to edit/delete forum posts and not just comments as well as modes for single forums. It also has some performance enhancements which we could use as the site is getting busier.

This has been a long time coming in Drupal and was previously only possible with multiple modules which caused some issues. The only issue is that a few modules we use have not been updated. The Views module (which gives us our better recent posts page displaying forum name, etc), the spam module (which helps protect the forums) and the simplenews module (which will run the newsletter and has all the subscriber details within) are not yet updated for Drupal 6. So, we need to wait a bit.

PortableApps.com Platform

The next platform release is coming. I'm not going to commit to a day, but it should be this week. It depends on how long the app updates take and whether a project does multiple releases in a week again. This will also mark the beginning of SVN access to the code so collaborative development can take place.

SourceForge.net Top 5

The PortableApps.com Project over at SourceForge.net is now in the top 5 in most downloaded in the last 7 days and has been for a little while. We're actually at number 4 at the moment. It fluctuates by day, so we'll be up and down a couple spots.

That's it for now. Sorry the update was late in coming. I'll get next week's out earlier.

Thanks John, I'm really looking forward for more PortableApps updates of the apps I have! I am also really, really looking forward to having the new PortableApps.com Menu on my USB stick, I reckon it is going to be so good! I know Beta 4 is great, but it'll be great to get an update! Is that going to be another Beta (Beta 5) or is there going to be a full release?

Thanks again John for all the great apps made portable! Keep up the great work!

Yea John, it's Simeon's AssaultCube, I just posted the post because Simeon was sleeping and I had to upload it.

I was just wondering if you've taken a look into Simeon's AssaultCube Portable.

Anywho, I double checked it and it was good, however there was a licensing issue with compression or something Simeon noticed that I haven't had time to check into, but he was going to ask them if it was okay to post it compressed with the PortableApps.com Installer, I'll forward you the e-mail.

As an alternative is that doesn't get sorted out quick enough, BonkEnc is my most popular app, and it's good just I need to fix the icon.

I've got plenty of hosting now, so we'll be good keeping Simeon's AssaultCube on there for some more time if it is needed.

I'm thrilled to hear that the platform and the paf-specs are coming!
That will certainly help us taking a permanent seat in the Top 5
And about Assaultcube, although its hosted on Sourceforge, I discovered that not the whole package has one license and so I thought it would be better to ask them if we can have it here.

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

It won't conflict. I'll have to update the PortableApps.com Drupal theme, though... which I have to do for 6.0 anyway as I did for 5.0.

And, yeah, I can't wait til we can have proper forum admins. It'll make life easier on Marko, Ryan and I in terms of moderating and easier on all the users. I'm looking for a module to show who is mods of what forums (not sure if Drupal does it natively, yet). This will also make it easier for us to add additional language forums and have individual moderators who are fluent.

Using this as part of the 'Newsletter' has been mentioned, and John said it's really not what most people want to know, and the newsletter is planned for the next release of the PAM. So I don't see it being the RSS if he doesn't want it as a newsletter either.